For those of you who aren't really apprised with my work. I work Medical Standby for the Oil and Gas industry in Canada. It's great pay for not a ton of work, but there aspects of it that can sometimes get to a guy.

First of all I'm part of safety on sights, the gods of the industry consider me and my designation part of that little lump. Safety is important here, but sometimes it's extremely difficult and a lot of the time the rules aren't followed to the letter, or they're skirted over. Every company does it, because to accomidate every minute detail of every safety rule would mean nothing ever get's done… or so people say.

Well my current site rep out here believes that all safety must be followed and it has to work, otherwise he phone's his superiors and asks for an exemption. There is no lip service, there is no halfway there is fully in or not at all. We work 3 hours away from anywhere and if the guys working under him don't have the proper safety then everything stops until they do.

Common sense and reason does not always factor into safety rules, but that's not the point, because you can't legislate common sense can you? So we have to consider the possibility that illiterate kamakazi ninja's will try to storm our site, stand under every suspended object,kiss every source of H2S, and use all flammable materials as ashtrays.

The problem is that if safety rules and common sense are mutually exclusive, then sometimes safety rules have no common sense themselves. Here's an example:

One of my jobs on this site is to maintain an accurate headcount of everyone on site so that if we have a problem and all the workers have to muster (meaning they all gather at the entrance of the site until the emergency has passed) I can then list off all their names and see if anyone is hurt and still inside the facility somewhere at which point we would stage a rescue operation. To keep this headcount accurate, we have a gate to our site that I'm always stationed near. This gate consists of a rope with some orange tape hanging from it for visibility, when people come up to the gate I see them and pull down the rope once I'm sure they know the rules of the site. The problem is, we've had some very large trucks coming through lately and we've had to pull down part of the fence beside the gate to accomidate them… but it never came back up… so I'm sitting here minding a gate with a big opening right beside it for the kamakazi ninjas to get through and this doesn't occur to anyone but me!

I can't plug the hole with my own truck because I don't have a positivie air shutdown device installed (don't get me started…) so finally after the 8th truck drives past my gate because it's the path of least resistance (duh) I a paroxium of frustration on one undeserving worker who looks at me like I just pissed all over his head for no reason. I tell the site rep and the hole is plugged. So I guess all's good now…

One Response to Frustration

Hi Toe-Knee Canada:Sounds like you have your hands full. I just read a book called Climate Change and the Oil Industry and all the problems with our dependence on them. They have misled us into addiction and continually manipulate the minds of consumers (and of Medical Standbys). I used to be an EMT and I also worked in an antiquated factory that made bleach. Their idea of an emergency procedure was to open the bay doors when someone made a boo boo and mixed the bleach with windshield wash which created a sort of chemical cloud?Needless to say, eventually I was injured and had surgery and haven't been able to work since. (yrs.) Kind of ironic since I cared for quadriplegics and now have a neck injury. Anyway, keep your chin up, your head down, and your fences mended. They will eventually run out of oil anyway!Take care,www.nhgreen.vox.com